It was a snowy night — a blizzard in fact — and by midnight the snow already had crept up to the bottom of our dining room windows.
It was Christmas Eve in the 1960s, and we were waiting for my mother to get home from work so we could celebrate.
The big evergreen in the living room was glittering with lights and bulbs and tinsel, the gifts were piled high underneath and holiday treats were laid out on the dining room table, waiting to be consumed.
My mother was an emergency room nurse at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan and worked the evening shift. In those days, she often worked holidays and we accepted that fact. After my older siblings had reached high school age, we opened our presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning. We knew that if my mother had to work overtime, we just had to wait.
On many nights during the year, she didn’t make it home until long after her shift was supposed to end at 11 p.m. That’s what happens when you work at a small, rural hospital where there’s a skeleton staff at night. You never know what is going to happen at any moment. If a car tumbles over a bridge in Solon at 10:30 p.m., you don’t just go home when your shift ends — you stay until your work is done, which is kind of like a reporter’s job, come to think of it.
Anyway, on that Christmas Eve long ago, the snow kept coming down and coming.
It was a busy night at the hospital and 11 p.m. passed and then midnight. Though we were all getting sleepy, we waited. It was no Christmas Eve without my mother, who was fun and enthusiastic and loved it when we were all together.
I was the youngest of seven, so the house was always full of activity year-round — a lot of music and laughter and discussion.
On weekends when we got to stay up late, mom was delighted if she came home from work and found us up and sitting around the kitchen table, playing music, making fudge, doing whatever we did in those days. If we had company, she was doubly pleased.
I always felt fortunate when friends from school would describe strained relationships with their mothers. I don’t believe I ever had a cross word with mine, who was generous, funny and smart and had more energy than most people half her age.
As open as she was with most things, she was amazingly private when it came to issues such as her health and she had her share during her 92-year life.
When I was little, she had bone cancer and was in the hospital for a year with her leg in traction. We spent Christmas Day in her room. I was scared she might die, but no one talked about that. I lived with a sort of gnawing dread that a 7-year-old couldn’t begin to understand, let alone verbalize.
But she didn’t die, and I remember the day the ambulance brought her home. She was crying — one of the few times I ever saw her cry — and I was confused and thought something was wrong. I later learned she was crying just because she was so happy to be home.
In later years, after she recovered from cancer, she had a lot of issues with osteoporosis and her bones broke easily. She was always undergoing surgeries followed by tough recoveries. While we knew she was in pain much of her life, she never complained.
She was a survivor and just kept plugging along, though for many years she used crutches to get around, even while she was working at the hospital. She would be embarrassed if she knew I was telling these tales out of school. She didn’t focus on her physical ailments and didn’t want anyone else to. But when I think back to that snowy Christmas Eve and the excitement I felt when she arrived home at 2 in the morning, I think about how resilient she was — and such a positive force.
The police drove her home in a Jeep of some kind, as the roads were barely passable. They couldn’t even get into the driveway, which was adrift in snow with more blowing in. Its headlights illuminated the driveway as the officer escorted her, crutches and all, through the drifts to the house.
She arrived inside, joyful and looking younger than her years, though she had just finished a long and undoubtedly arduous shift at work. She was happy to be home with us.
My mother will have been gone three years Jan. 1 and I miss her, but when I envision her face that early Christmas morning, I am filled with a warmth that really is an everlasting gift.
Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter for 29 years. Her column appears here Mondays. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com.
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